Just Between Strangers

musings tossed into the void . . .

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

They picked the wrong fight this time

George Galloway, a British member of Parliament, testified before the Senate yesterday to rebut accusations that had been made about his possible involvement in an oil-for-food scandal. Possibly the GOP Senators hoped that this accusation would divert attention from the recent discovery that the US was behind and directing most of the embargo-defying oil purchases, but they found themselves at the receiving end of the sort of blistering attack that only a Scotsman can bring.

Watch the video or read the transcript; either way, it makes you long for shows of spine on our side of the pond. Among the highlights:

As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his.. . .I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

You might think they'd have shouted him down or cut him off, but I think that the combination of their surprise and his righteous indignation was too much. Anyway, they opened the door. Yee-hah!